Will Shakespeare is a very funny fellow. Yet pity poor Will because, for the last several centuries, no other author has been adapted, trashed, reinterpreted, rearranged, fixed and generally mauled and messed with than the Bard of Stratford-on-Avon. Some shows, like Kiss Me Kate and West Side Story have been brilliant and wildly successful. Then, there have been less fortunate attempts

Ken Ludwig is a very funny fellow, as proven by his two wildly comical Broadway successes, Lend Me a Tenor and Moon Over Buffalo. However, his new work, Shakespeare in Hollywood, now at home at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston, is far from the hysterical knockabout farce it seems to want to be. This is Ludwig's take on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, forcing it into a modern retelling. But, by imposing only some of the plot and some of the characters from the play onto the actual filming of the 1934 Warner Brothers movie of that Shakespearean comedy, he gives the audience something of a confusing mess. For farce to really work, the audience has to be totally "in" on the jokes -- and this simply doesn't happen. There are just too many plots and subplots in the original to translate smoothly. Not only that, but a fairly intimate knowledge of both Shakespeare and Hollywood in the '30s is required to understand a great deal of what's happening.

Perhaps, initially, Ludwig tried a tighter adaptation closer to the original, and ended up with an even more confusing muddle. As it stands now, the play is neither really amusing in its exploitation of those silly cinema characters, nor any kind of homage to Shakespeare's comedy. Several American companies have taken a whack at this play commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company with varying degrees of success, but it is doubtful that this show, receiving its New England premiere, will ever see the lights of Broadway -- at least in its present condition.

Director Spiro Veloudos struggles courageously with the material, and does manage to succeed in creating a sometimes funny, but essentially empty, evening of entertainment. A regional theatre, regardless of its financial endowments, simply is ill-equipped to recreate the glamour of Hollywood in the '30s with any verisimilitude. And Shakespeare's magic seems strangely at odds with Hollywood's magic. The enchanted flower whose pollen causes instant adoration is out of place in an arena where everyone is yearning to be adored, and changing someone into an ass in Hollywood seems, well, redundant. Also, the disguises and mistaken identities on which Midsummer turns are stretched way beyond any credibility. David Krinitt is a very talented and amusing actor, but to see him playing Joe E. Brown -- who is playing Flute, who is playing Thisbe in drag -- becomes such a complex set of realities as really to hamper the humor. And Christopher Chew, as the real Oberon plopped onto the Warner's lot for reasons not clearly explained, is forever quoting Shakespeare's lines (from Midsummer and assorted other works), like some out-of-work Shakespearean actor showing off. Krinitt, Chew and the rest of the ensemble are talented, credible and funny performers who seem constantly to run up against the brick wall of the text. Peter Carey is particularly entertaining as Will Hays, the censor responsible for the Hollywood production code, but, let's face it, this is not a real hard target for a comic writer to hit right. Nevertheless, Carey succeeds in creating a very human character, and, as a result, scores the most laughs of the evening. Looking into a mirror to remove the magic pollen from his eye, he falls madly in love with himself, and has a fairly autoerotic love scene that is simply hysterical. But, after being changed into the aforementioned ass, when he returns as Will Hays again, he immediately morphs into Malvolio from Twelfth Night for reasons evidently best known to the playwright.

Outside the entrance to the Lyric's auditorium is a blow-up of a note from Ken Ludwig about writing Shakespeare in Hollywood. In it, he confesses to be "an academic at heart." Herein lays the major problem with the work. As a short review sketch, it would be hysterical and heavenly, but there's an underlying pretentiousness here with the material stretched to a full evening's entertainment that defies the daffy logic of farce. Unlike Ludwig's other work, this is gaudy and ostentatious, with gales and blusters blowing from Shakespeare's humor, Hollywood's extravagance and contemporary comedy, leaving the audience with nothing but a farce in a gale of wind. Shakespeare in Hollywood will be presented Wednesday to Friday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., with matinees Saturday at 4 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., through June 4. There is also a matinee Wednesday, June 1, at 2 p.m. Tickets: $19-$41. For more information, 617-437-7172.